


Remnants from Detail of the Woods

by justlikeyouimagined



Series: Remnants [3]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Angst, Hannibal Loves Will, Luxuriating with a corpse, M/M, Murder dreams, Murder therapy, Obsession paraded as love, Post-Episode: s03e13 The Wrath of the Lamb, Post-Fall (Hannibal), Reflections about life choices in Canada, See again about the angst, Vulnerable Hannibal Lecter, richard siken
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-11
Updated: 2018-09-11
Packaged: 2019-07-11 01:05:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15961403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justlikeyouimagined/pseuds/justlikeyouimagined
Summary: A parallel piece for Part 1 of the Remnants series, prompted by a comment that asked what Hannibal's perspective might have been after the fall. Begins moments after the fall, ends along with Part 1. Because I cannot seem to help myself, I doused this in an extra layer of angst by making it an exercise in writing a story around a poem.





	Remnants from Detail of the Woods

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks must go out to [Immagraveyardxoxo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Immagraveyardxoxo/pseuds/Immagraveyardxoxo) for their short comment on Part 1 that prompted me to think about Hannibal's perspective during that time period. So maybe read part 1 of this series first, though it's not strictly necessary. The poem that the story is written around is 'Detail of the Woods' by Richard Siken. I've put it in full at the end of the fic (and in italics throughout). His works slipped past me for a decade and I'm making up for lost time, I suppose. I'll admit that I never intended to capture Hannibal's voice through this, only to go through a parallel time period involving him. 
> 
> Extra thanks to [HanniballisticMissile](https://archiveofourown.org/users/HanniballisticMissile/pseuds/HanniballisticMissile) for the beta.

The truth of it was that he hadn’t been ready for the final submission.

When the toying had finally become reciprocation, unfurling in his arms, resting heavy on his chest, it felt cloyingly too perfect to altogether trust. In the moment, it left him paralyzed, unwilling to move for fear of breaking what delicate strands looped them together. His life was nothing but lessons in patience, the beauty that comes from craving, from cultivating and indulging only when a moment was truly ripe.

But then it came. That moment.

After years of waiting, it was sickly sweet, nearly putrid. And yet, it caught him by surprise. Stilled him long enough to let doubt dye the edges of the his bright stinging joy. It was just a tickle, but it was enough.

The truth of it was that not knowing was better than staying to watch it all slip away.

There were few moments in his life where he’d admit to acting cowardly. He wouldn’t admit to this one, either. But still, how easy it was, even months later, to conjure up that sucking feeling in his chest that comes when what you should do — and what you act on — misalign.

On darker evenings, he might concede, the incongruity of it could masquerade as cowardice. Might confuse someone who wasn’t him. As it was, he locks it away, focuses instead on the replay of the sensation, upon the crushing physicality with which their bodies hit the water. Before. Then, he had left Will behind.

\---

_I looked at all the trees and didn’t know what to do.  
A box made out of leaves._

\---

He’d stayed longer than was safe to, watching from the curtains of the forest. Saw the dark evening erupt in red and blue, refused to leave even when the dogs arrived and set out into the woods further south. He recognized the quiet rage roiling under physical pain, aimed towards those that were helping Will in a way that he’d been incapable of doing earlier.

It was a possessive loathing, demanding snapped necks and spilled intestines. Woven with it, though, an unfamiliar feeling. Helplessness.

It tasted like spoiled meat. His mouth was full of it.

Will had come up, and the weight of his desertion threatened to choke the air from his throat. He was there, thrashing against the EMTs, dazed and in pain and — if Hannibal allowed himself the indulgence — searching each face of those that touched him, disgusted when it wasn’t who he’d been hoping for.

His need to show himself to Will had almost crumbled his self-perseverance then, a consuming impulse to carve his way through the chaos of the crime scene, near-mortal wounds be damned. Calm the frenzy he thought he saw in Will’s eyes; or maybe, give it focus. The craving to amend for his fleeing felt like bloodlust, but the cover of the woods caged him in.

He felt the defeat like his own when Will gave up the fighting, allowing his body to go limp and heavy against the EMT guiding him onto the gurney. The moment’s vulnerability shifted the woods around him, the black-green turning icy white, his breath a hazy mist obscuring his vision. He felt the cold in his bones first, and with it, the impotence that hollowed out his future. He was a small boy then, clutching himself and stumbling into no more than the next second, then the next.

And then, he was bullet-wounded, broken, bleeding.

And then, it was time to go.

Briefly, his eyes closed, before he turned and limped slowly, deeper into the trees.

\---

_What else was in the woods? A heart, closing. Nevertheless.  
Everyone needs a place. It shouldn’t be inside of someone else._

\---

The first time he goes to him, it is months too late. At first, he could convince himself he wasn’t physically able; that going so soon would be akin to turning himself in all over again.

When his justifications wore thin, he stayed away anyway, lost in a quiet sombalesence he’d grown familiar with in the BSHCI. He stalled himself for weeks, denying the wisps of uncertainty that licked about his visions of their reunion.

Then, of course, there was the accompanying compulsion to devour the uncertainty whole, taking Will with it. So for a time, he stayed away because to do anything else would have guaranteed the need for a sacrifice.

When he makes the trip, it is to prove to himself that he could resist. To keep tabs, collect intel, adjust plans based on physical or emotional limits.

He nearly crashes headlong into him in the forest, so uninhibited is Will’s meandering path as he cuts himself on branches in a near frantic rush to escape whatever he is leaving behind. For a fleeting moment, he had been close enough to reach out of the bushes and attach himself again. Claw back into the cover of the forest and let wild, feral impulses drive his next steps. When he sees him so close again, there is nothing left in him beyond bloodlust and magnanimous compassion.

Will doesn’t notice, cruelly. He doesn’t seem remotely affected by the physical forces that Hannibal is sure were working to draw him out of the coverage of the trees. No, he is past as soon as he comes, breaking through the treeline of the forest and onto the property, stumbling to catch his breath. With the increasing distance between them, Hannibal feels clear-headed in a way that he regrets having momentarily lost. He straightens up, watches.

Though he is prepared to see them together, he did not anticipate the strength of his need to possess, to devour all that is not him and him and them. Will is lured into a feigned future by her, drawn by her bulletproof hand towel slung over her shoulder: a domestic suit of armour. Draping himself across Molly’s lap is a paled replica of the man Hannibal remembers: he is defeated and defenseless and desperate in a manner that doesn’t suit him at all.

He doesn’t need to be near to know he smells of sweat and regrets and loss.

Of surrender.

Is this the moment you gave up on me? Is it already too late?

He doesn’t stay to find out.

\---

 _I kept my mind on the moon. Cold moon, long nights moon._  
_From the landscape: a sense of scale._  
_From the dead: a sense of scale._  
_I turned my back on the story. A sense of superiority._

\---

He leaves the country after that, crossing into sleepy Canadian towns, intent on chartering a plane from Fredericton to anywhere else. They’ve survived oceans and iron bars between them before — but a broken down Camry an hour from the airport rips through best laid abandonment plans. The rage he feels at being denied a simple escape bubbles over; Hannibal steadies himself against the sounds of the garage attendant’s cracking bones, popping eyeballs. He feels vicious in a way that’s unfairly reminiscent of what he doesn’t have anymore, and so he slaughters the receptionist of the small auto shop too, because he can.

There is no trademark calling card, nor any near psychic empaths hunting him, connecting the dots. But he drives out and away from New Brunswick all the same. He heads north and then west to settle in rural Quebec. The summer passes visiting French Regime churches, and sketching windmills in the late afternoon heat, and staring out at the starry skies until they escape into the early mornings. Slowly, the monster lurches back behind bonds and he is himself again. Though he is only himself. That should feel familiar, but instead it rings hollow.

He doesn’t think of Will Graham anymore, other than incessantly, possessively, relentlessly.

\---

_Everything casts a shadow.  
Your body told me in a dream it’s never been afraid of anything._

\---

Whether out of curiosity or a compulsive need to predict the future, he plays out every possibility of their eventual reunion. It becomes a meditative exercise that he slips into after dinner. He wraps himself in layers of their past, then casts his mind into the future to draw out another alternate shadow world.

He doesn’t entertain possibilities that are recklessly indulgent; this exercise satisfies that need enough as it is. Instead, he makes arrangements: secures frayed connections, sells property, swaps identities again and again. Builds potentials, then spends twice as long on their attack, whittling down a list of realistic opportunities. Through it all, there is certainty: the way out begins, and ends, with Will.

His dreams are seldom, rarely surprising, thoroughly picked over remnants of a mind left with too much time for navel gazing. Until, that is, this one locks him. After the first night, it traps him down with it; after a week, it plays in looping cycles through his mind, conscious or no. It is insistent in the way of prophesy. It feels like a calling that he ignores again and again and again:

_From the vantage point of the kitchen's double doors, he sees him only in outline at first. A dark mass too heavy in the fresh grass, too disharmonious with the organic flow of the gardens. His eyes adjust, the colours fading as his cortex hones in on movements and contrast. Here is contrast: beautiful and terrifying and wanting._

_He knows there are two people because he's dreamt it a dozen times before. Knows he'll take three steps onto the back patio, then feel the cool dew between his toes. It doesn't matter how many times he loops through it. When he sees it again, he sees it anew._

_What defines Will from the dead thing beside him is not immediately clear. The blood is spread over the two of them to make everything slick in the moonlight. The man's chest is open, red marrow dripping from shattered ribs; Will’s hair is tangled in it, his face resting at the precipice of the hollowed out space. Hannibal stops short to admire the beast of it all._

_Will's legs are intertwined with the limbs of the body, pliable before rigor sets in. There is a tumbling in the core of his belly watching this, anticipating the future, like a dance. The way he will now trace the jagged edges of the cavity, then plunge his hand deep into the heat of the body, push further still, until he covers himself in it. Buries and searches and cleanses in the heady stench of impermanence._

_There is no twitch in the way Will caresses the corpse, all hesitation bled out long before this kill. This is private familiarity, this is love. This is absolution for years of denying oneself._

_What happens next sometimes changes._

_He could go back into the kitchen, put distance and walls between reflections. He could sink down, wrap himself bodily around the back of Will's blood soaked frame, nuzzle the nape of his neck. Could find the blade, abandoned in the greenery, press it firmly against his carotid, hope to replace the dead thing with something more desperate or deserving of Will's devotion._

_This time though, he becomes an equal. He circles around to the other side of the dead man, kneels down, slow and steady as though he approaches a nervous animal. 'I am here. We are not afraid', except it is his own trepidation mirrored back on himself, so long forgotten. Before him, the vibrating pleasure that comes from abandonment in the moment._

_So he abandons._

_He pushes in, up to the elbows. It feels better than the first time, in a way only dreams are able to satisfy. Under the yards of innards, their fingers intertwine. This surging, this livelihood crashing through his mental bonds, is something worth pursuing. He has waited too long._

This time when he wakes, he finds that he has run out of excuses. He gathers himself. Finally, he leaves.

And then he is there, on the porch, within arms reach. Tangible and absolutely unafraid. There is a flash between them, a rejoining, of futures reconnected.

This time they go together, out of the woods.

**Author's Note:**

> Come say hi on [Tumblr](https://trikemily.tumblr.com).  
> Full poem:
> 
> I looked at all the trees and didn’t know what to do.
> 
> A box made out of leaves.  
> What else was in the woods? A heart, closing. Nevertheless.
> 
> Everyone needs a place. It shouldn’t be inside of someone else.  
> I kept my mind on the moon. Cold moon, long nights moon.
> 
> From the landscape: a sense of scale.  
> From the dead: a sense of scale.
> 
> I turned my back on the story. A sense of superiority.  
> Everything casts a shadow.
> 
> Your body told me in a dream it’s never been afraid of anything.
> 
> – [“Detail of the Woods”](https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/detail-woods) by Richard Siken


End file.
